9. The Washout
NINE
The Washout
WYATT
The world turns to noise.
It isn't just sound. It is a violent, physical, vibrating wall of atmospheric pressure that completely strips the breath from my lungs the moment I drag Addy out of the storm cellar tunnel and into the freezing air.
The wind hits us like a derailing freight train, carrying the sharp, metallic stench of electrified ozone and pulverized earth.
Heavy automatic gunfire chatters aggressively behind us, sounding faint and entirely ridiculous against the apocalyptic roar rapidly building in the valley below. Frost and his team will hold the breach. They're bleeding to buy us time.
I don't look back.
Violent, branch lightning webs continuously across the bruised, purple-black sky.
It's a relentless, blinding strobe that refuses to fade, illuminating the violently thrashing timber line in jagged, terrifying flashes.
The massive pines are bent completely horizontal, groaning and snapping under the impossible atmospheric pressure and wind.
Addy stumbles over an exposed root. She loses her grip on my tactical belt. Freezing rain slashes down in blinding, punishing sheets. The sheer force of the wind catches the heavy fabric of her fleece jacket, literally trying to lift her off her feet and hurl her into the dark.
I grab her hand, dragging her forward and pulling her hard against my right side to anchor her to the earth.
"Keep moving!" I shout the order directly against her ear to be heard over the world-ending roar tearing through the valley. "Do not let go!"
She nods frantically, her fingers digging like claws into my scarred hand, fighting violently for every single inch of traction in the slick, freezing mud.
A massive pine tree shears completely off exactly twenty yards to our left with a sound like a heavy artillery crack. The entire upper half of the tree instantly vanishes into the dark, sucked into the vortex forming above the ridge.
I scan the devastated slope. The ground drops sharply away toward the flooded valley floor, exposing a treacherous mess of jagged limestone rocks and torn roots.
Then I see it.
There.
A washout.
Thirty yards down the steep incline. Years of violent flash floods have carved a deep, concave hollow directly beneath the massive root system of an ancient, dying oak tree. The thick, gnarled roots form a desperate cage over the deep hollow. It's not a reinforced bunker.
It's literally a hole in the dirt.
But it's three feet below grade, and right now, it's all we have.
I haul Addy toward it, fighting the treacherous incline and the sheer, physical force of the tornadic wind actively trying to push us back up the lethal hill.
The atmospheric pressure violently drops. It feels exactly like a cold ice pick being driven directly behind my eardrums.
Addy cries out in sharp pain, immediately clapping a hand over her left ear.
"Under the roots!" I shove her forward, sliding recklessly down the slick, dangerous embankment. "Get in the hole!"
We hit the muddy bottom of the hollow hard. It instantly smells of wet rot, ancient clay, and desperate survival.
The roar becomes absolute. The earth shakes in a violent, continuous shuddering that rattles my teeth.
I drag Addy deep into the narrowest part of the muddy undercut. The massive oak roots form a thick, tangled lattice directly above our heads. She curls into a tight, defensive ball, her hands locked over her ears, the encrypted hardshell drive clutched fiercely against her chest.
I drop my entire weight over her.
I cover her completely. My broad shoulders are squared directly to the jagged opening of the washout, turning my heavy canvas jacket and back into a physical shield to take the brunt of whatever the storm throws into the hollow.
I bracket her small body with my arms, driving my fingers deep into the slick clay on either side of her shoulders, physically locking myself into the earth.
Violent debris hits my jacket like shrapnel. Jagged rocks, heavy clods of dirt, and shredded, razor-sharp pine bark batter my spine.
I press my massive weight down harder, completely pinning her to the ground. The heat of her body bleeds through the freezing, wet fabric of our clothes.
Three agonizing days in that safe house. Three days of keeping a brutal professional distance. Accepting Frost's silent judgment. Swallowing the quiet, corrosive humiliation of being tolerated by his team but never trusted.
None of it matters right now.
Frost and his team are a mile away, fighting a heavily armed Ares Global kill squad. The disastrous contract, the four years of bitter exile, the fractured bloodline—it's all irrelevant noise.
This is the only thing that exists in the entire world. The dark hollow, the freezing mud, and the absolute, feral, uncompromising imperative to keep the woman trapped under my chest breathing.
I will gladly let the mountain bury me to ensure she survives it.
The ancient oak groans violently above us. The heavy root cage shifts under the extreme atmospheric pressure, showering us in heavy clumps of loose dirt and freezing water.
I tighten my punishing grip on the earth, turning my face directly into the warm curve of her neck to protect my eyes from the flying debris.
The roar peaks. It becomes a deafening, physical pressure that crushes the remaining oxygen out of the tiny hollow. My eardrums scream in agony.
The world directly above us rips itself apart.
Time ceases to exist inside the noise.
Gradually, the vibration in the earth lessens. The freight-train roar stretches out, moving east, fading into the heavy, torrential sound of rain.
Cold water pours through the root lattice, soaking my jacket, washing the mud from my face.
I wait thirty seconds. Sixty.
The wind drops from a howl to a steady, punishing gale.
I push up onto my elbows, taking my weight off Addy.
"Addy."
She doesn't move. She's curled into a tight knot, shivering violently, her hands still clamped over her ears.
"Addy. Look at me."
She lifts her head. Her face is streaked with mud and rain. Her eyes are wide, pupils blown out, shocked and unfocused.
I run my hands over her quickly. Brutally clinical. Checking for deep lacerations, compound breaks, or concussions. Her collarbones are perfectly intact beneath the fleece. Arms solid. Legs responsive. No warm blood matting her dark, wet hair.
She suddenly grabs my wrists. Not to stop the frantic medical assessment. To pull herself up out of the freezing mud.
She launches her entire body into me, throwing her arms desperately around my thick neck. The heavy hardshell drive digs into my chest between us. Her mouth crashes into mine—fierce, entirely uncoordinated, and desperate, tasting heavily of wet earth, adrenaline, and freezing rain.
Seventy-two agonizing hours of forced, suffocating distance shatters in a single, violent second. The paralyzing terror of the last ten minutes burns off into something dark and completely feral.
I take her face in both of my scarred hands and kiss her back.
It is hard. Punishing. Entirely bruising.
I need the heat of her mouth. I need the frantic beat of her pulse against my palms to prove she's alive. The clinical check wasn't enough. I need the visceral reality of her breathing against me to convince my nervous system that the storm didn't take her.
She makes a sharp, fractured, animalistic sound in the back of her throat, her freezing fingers gripping the heavy canvas of my tactical jacket even tighter, pulling me closer until there is absolutely zero space left between us.
I forcefully break the kiss, pulling oxygen into my burning lungs. I rest my forehead heavily against hers. Her fingers are like ice where they dig into my wet collar.
"I'm okay." Her voice shakes. She holds up the hardshell drive between us. Intact.
I drag my focus back to the perimeter, and tap the comms unit on my vest.
"Frost. This is Reaper. Status."
Static.
"Flint. Kade. Anyone on this net."
Nothing but the empty hiss of a dead frequency.
I push out from under the roots and climb the slick embankment, grabbing a handful of exposed rock to haul myself up to the lip of the washout.
The timber line is gone.
Where the safe house stood, there is nothing but flattened brush and the jagged, shattered stumps of pine trees. The storm cut a half-mile wide swath directly through the ridge.
If the safe house survived the breach, it didn't survive the tornado.
I drop back down into the hollow. Addy is on her feet, leaning against the dirt wall.
"The internal comms network is entirely dead," I say, my voice a flat, emotionless rasp. "The safe house is gone. Completely leveled."
"The team? Frost?" She takes a ragged, uneven breath. Her dark eyes immediately dart toward the destroyed ridge.
"If they made it into the reinforced main storm cellar before the funnel touched down, they're alive." I pull my sidearm from the drop-leg holster, checking the action to ensure the chamber is clear of mud, and securely re-holster it.
"We need to go back up there." Addy points toward the chaotic wreckage of the tree line. "We need to check the debris."
"No."
"Wyatt, we can't just leave?—"
"A heavily armed Ares Global kill squad hit the perimeter three minutes before the storm dropped," I cut her off, my tone leaving zero room for negotiation.
"If any of those operators survived the touchdown, that ridge is now a highly active ambush point.
We walk back up that hill blind, we walk directly into a lethal crossfire. "
I step closer, gripping her shoulders, forcing her to look at me instead of staring up the devastated hill.
"Frost is a professional. He knows how to fight, and he knows how to survive. He got his men below ground. And he expects me to get you clear of the kill zone."
"And what about them?"
"He takes care of his team. I take care of you." The line is absolute. "I'll run recon once I have you in a defensible location. Not before."
She holds my gaze for a beat. She reads the finality in my dark eyes, and doesn't argue. She just nods once, pulling the zipper of her fleece tight to her throat, and slides the encrypted hardshell drive deep into her inside chest pocket.
"Where do we go?"
"East. Away from the strike zone."
We find high ground, assess the comms situation, and keep moving.
She steps out from under the roots, into the freezing rain.
We're cut off, on foot, in the dark, with a kill squad looking for the drive in her pocket.
It's the worst tactical position I've been in since the night I found out the man I killed was a federal witness.
I look at her standing in the rain, chin up, waiting for the call.
"Come." I grab her hand and pull her toward the broken wilderness.